In recent years, in-line skating has become extremely popular. In-line skates generally have a frame and a boot attached to the frame. The boots of many in-line skates include hard outer shells covering portions of a soft inner liner. In some skates, the hard outer shell may be integrally molded with the soft liner. Typically, the shell includes a cuff and a lower shell that are pivotally connected. Pivotal connections between a cuff and a lower shell of an in-line skate boot are generally accomplished by a rivet, a bolt or another mechanism being disposed through coaxially aligned apertures in the cuff and lower shell. This pivotal connection is made on both right and left sides of each skate. The aperture in the cuff is sized to permit pivotal movement of the cuff about the rivet, bolt or other mechanism. Thus, pivotal movement of the cuff relative to the lower shell of an in-line skate boot have generally been confined to a relatively small, fixed area adjacent to a skater's ankle when the skater's foot is comfortably positioned in the boot.
Pivotal connections utilizing rivets generally pivot about a fixed axis which is defined by the rivet, bolt or other mechanism. Movement of an ankle joint of a human foot, however, does not occur around a fixed lateral axis. Rather, the axis about which a skater's foot flexes, may vary among skaters and may depend upon the shape, location and size of the talus of the skater's foot. In addition, the degree of rotation may vary between the medial and lateral mallet of each foot. Thus, conventional fixed-axis pivotal connections are limited in their ability to accommodate actual movement of a human foot.
The present invention provides a solution to this and other problems and offers other advantages over the prior art.